If you had told me that one of the happiest days of my life would occur as my only child was dying of cancer, I would not have believed you.

Guy was diagnosed when he was 15 and bursting with life, projects, and plans. Halfway into his first year of high school, he was writing poetry and playing the drums. He liked to dream up odd characters with names like “Cassius Clad” and “Patricia Eggy,” for whom he drew cartoon portraits and family trees. With a couple of friends, he was getting ready to teach a medieval history class at his high school. He spent as much time as he could with his girlfriend, Katie. He had a loving mother and father. Life was good.

But the headaches came, followed by a CT scan, revealing a mass in his left frontal lobe. The tumor was removed the next day. Fifteen friends from school crowded into his hospital room afterward for an impromptu celebration.

I knew that Guy had only a 15-percent chance of being alive in five years. He didn’t know the odds; he told me he didn’t want to know. He just wanted to live.

For six months, that’s what he did, returning to school and his music and his poetry and his girlfriend. That spring, a teacher happened to hear about a teen writing contest on the subject of cancer. He dove into the project, emerging with an essay that was polished but vibrating with raw emotion, mostly rage. While it was very good, I privately felt sure it was not what the sponsors of the contest were looking for. Too real, too adult, too much like a punch in the gut.

That fall, Guy went downhill quickly. The cancer returned, followed by more surgery. He grew thin. His incision wouldn’t heal because it kept leaking cerebrospinal fluid. A piece of bone in his skull became infected and had to be removed, leaving a dent in his head, his brain covered only by skin. Things were very dark.

One night in that dark time, the phone rang in Guy’s hospital room, something about an essay contest. It rang a bell from what seemed like a previous lifetime. Guy had won the teen writing contest, and we were invited to an awards reception. I said no at first, since Guy was so sick. But I relented when I saw how passionately he wanted to be there. 

We felt embraced the moment we entered Seattle Gilda’s Club. During the ceremony, Anna Gottlieb read Guy’s essay to a sometimes tearful audience, and then invited Guy to the stage. The picture of him standing there I will never forget. Tall, gaunt, pale: check. Shaved head and a jack-o-lantern scar: check. Awkward puppyish embrace of another boy on the stage: check. But burned deepest into my memory is that smile: radiant, transcendent, full of love.

Guy died two months later.

Now 14 years have passed, but that night’s smile is still with me, shimmering at the edges of my memory. It has become a symbol for me of what I learned that night at Gilda’s Club, that even the darkest time can be lit up with great happiness.

-Elizabeth Robichaud, February 28th, 2021